Laidlomycin is a polyether antibiotic that has been shown to inhibit the growth of Gram positive and ruminant bacteria. Laidlomycin has also been shown to increase the efficiency of feed utilization and rate of weight gain in domestic animals, especially meat-producing and milk-producing animals, such as cattle. Carbohydrates form a large part of these animals' diets, and the efficiency of carbohydrate utilization is desirably increased by treatment which encourages intraruminal production of propionate rather than acetate from carbohydrates. Additionally, laidlomycin suppresses rumen lactic acid production, thereby assisting in the prevention or treatment of bloat in ruminant animals.
Typically, laidlomycin is prepared by fermentation of organisms such as Streptoverticillium eurocidicum in a nutrient-containing aqueous broth containing sources of assimilable carbon and nitrogen. Known isolation processes to recover polyether antibiotics from the fermentation broth include complex, multistage solvent extraction processes. Other processes include the addition of hydrophobic materials such as glycerides and fatty acids to adsorb on the polyether antibiotic to form agglomerates. Such hydrophobic materials, however, need to be removed from the polyether antibiotic in a purification step.
There remains a need for alternative processes to isolate laidlomycin.